What can he Lifebloom for you?

For real this time: KAEL DOWN! May 20, 2008

Since I joined EoTS (it’s been about three weeks now), we have struggled to put a decent raid group together to actually get something accomplished, being stuck at 6/6, 3/4, 2/5, and 1/9 for the longest time.

Last night we actually went into an instance with a full raid group, albeit starting forty-five minutes after invite time. We went in with five healers, which was probably a first. I thought, “Five healers? And we’re trying what now? KAEL’THAS?!”

But man, did we have the damage. I think it’s because we had less prot warriors and less healers than usual, but all the adds went down incredifast. Like … stupid fast. Axe and shield were both dying within the first couple of seconds of phase three, which was just amazing. Ranged DPS was owning up Thaladred in phase three, and with our new kill order for advisors, Sanguinar was following closely (to free up our Kael’thas tank). On our first attempt of the night, we got all of the advisors down and got Kael’thas down to 56%, which is almost to phase five and the absolute lowest I had ever seen him.

Spirits were very high. We all knew this was the week that Kael’thas was going to die.

Two attempts later, weapons died very quickly again, giving us a lot of time in phase three. With only a wounded Capernian still up at the end of phase three, phase four was set up to go very smoothly, which it did. I don’t know how it went so smoothly. I have no idea how our DPS managed to coordinate keeping up weapon buffs/debuffs and bursting Kael’s bubble and interrupting his spell casts and avoiding the phoenix and killing the egg and crowd controlling the MCed and dispelling MC. Don’t ask me, they’re just amazing like that. I just healed like a tree on speed while trying like mad hell to avoid Flamestrike. Then, towards the end of phase four, I got disconnected. And our MT got disconnected. Some other people also got disconnected. O. M. F. G.

I scrambled to reconnect. I zoned in right as a Gravity Lapse was happening. I started swimming away from Kael’thas, and then I noticed that Grid had not loaded. O. M. F. G. Again. My thought process went something like this:

“OK, no time to panic. NO TIME TO FUCKING PANIC, GEOFF, SO GET A HOLD OF YOURSELF. Target Kael’thas and heal his target during ground phase. Heal myself by using my self unit frame. Why can’t I heal my party using their unit frames? Why can’t I click on their unit frames to target them? No matter. Bring up nameplates during Gravity Lapse to target nearby raid members to and heal.

Oh shit, I’m lagging again … I feel another disconnect coming up and Kael is at 15%!

No, I got lucky, it was just a lag spike. Continue to heal, Kael’thas’ health bar is ticking really, really low …”

And that was it. Kael’thas is now dead to EoTS. Congratulations to everyone. It kind of blows my mind how well everyone just worked together this fight. All of the tanks were so attentive. I think we went through three of them in phases four and five (a warrior and two bears). We killed Kael’thas for the first time with FIVE HEALERS. That’s just insane, and it would have been impossible if DPS wasn’t doing everything they were supposed to be doing (see above and the long list of shit they were responsible for).

(Links to bigger, less cropified picture)

After giving out loot (and a bunch of people going to turn in their MH quest) we went to SSC to blaze through Lurker and one-shot Vashj (my first Vashj down ever). I got both of my vial remnants in one night, and now have the honoured SotS ring sitting in my inventory (I’ll wait for at least the revered version of the ring before enchanting and equipping it).

EoTS has now cleared T5. I know I joined them after they had already toughed their way to 6/6 and 3/4, but I’d like to think that I had a part in making Kael’thas happen.

Hand of A’dal titles all around (not yet for me though—I still need a Rage Winterchill kill to finish my BT attunement, which I expect will happen this week).